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jacenbren · 2 years

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I am in a brainrot mood so I am subjecting y’all to my shitty random Ninjago headcanons because this show is already pretty gay but not quite gay enough:

Dr. Julien was autistic and wanted a son who would understand and be like him so he programmed Zane to be autistic too

After being in close proximity to so many explosions (because of his constant lighting shit on fire) Kai has pretty bad hearing loss

Nya made him special hearing aids because of this but Kai and most of the team are fluent in sign language

Jay has ADHD. I need not elaborate

Mans has so many stim toys its insane and he occasionally makes his own out of shit he has lying around

Speaking of Jay he has a lot of Lichtenberg scarring on his back and arms from using his powers

Kai also has a lot of scars from his powers but especially on his forearms and hands

His fight with the Boreal at the end of season 13 left him with some nasty nerve damage from frostbite when he blocked that ice blast so now Kai wears wrist braces sometimes

Cole has like half a dozen facial piercings most of which he has done himself in his bathroom with questionably safe equipment

He and Nya give each other new piercings/stick and poke tattoos sometimes

Nya gave Cole his snake bite piercings

Skylor and Kai tried to date after season 4 but it didnt really work out but they stayed friends and kinda forgot to tell everyone they broke up (at this point they’ve made a game out of how long they can make people think they’re still together)

Its been like 5 years and half the team hasn’t figured out that Kai and Zane started dating awhile ago

Kai sometimes drags Skylor to the nail salon and they get mani-pedis together while gossiping

Zane and Pixal have sort of a sibling dynamic/twin flame relationship

Pixal is dog autistic and Zane is cat autistic (don’t ask me to explain because I cant and if you get it You Get It)

Jay is the communal iPhone charger

Lloyd bleached his hair during his rebellious phase when he was still at Darkley’s but he got way too committed to the bit and Jay still isn’t convinced that Lloyd is actually a brunette

Morro hung around after DotD and he’s become kinda the equivalent of a mildly annoying poltergeist

Like he could leave and pass on if he wanted to but the Ninja kinda grew on him and he refuses to admit it so now he’s their resident insufferable asshole ghost

Jay collects beanie babies

Kai has a 1000000000-step hair/skincare routine and his products takes up like half the space in the bathroom

Cole doesn’t know how to ride a bicycle and at this point he’s too afraid to ask

Nya had a superwholock phase years ago and whenever Kai brings it up to fuck with her she punches him

Pixal liked to scare the living shit out of Kai and Zane when she was part of the Bounty’s computer by blasting All Star by Smash Mouth over the intercom whenever the security cameras caught them making out

Kai, Nya, and Morro all speak fluent Spanish

Skylor still has fangs from when she got turned into an Anacondrai and claims that she’s venomous (she actually isn’t but everyone’s too afraid to find out)

Ronin dabbled briefly in being a furry

Morro doesn’t actively seek out reality TV but whenever it happens to be on (like in the dentist waiting room or something) he gets way too invested

Lloyd is secretly a sucker for those trashy romance novels you can buy at the airport for like 5 bucks

Kai and Cole smoke weed together A Lot

Jay thinks that both of the Smith siblings are very attractive but he’s too embarrassed to say anything about it to Kai

Cole was a warrior cats kid

Nya has the highest alcohol tolerance on the entire team and frequently drinks people under the table

Kai, Nya: Public school

Jay, Zane, Pixal: Homeschooled

Cole, Lloyd: Private school

Lloyd was that kid in elementary school who used to hiss at and bite people (he still does as a grown ass man)

Jay is that friend who claims that they’re not gonna drink but has to get dragged home from the bar later

Zane wears exclusively Hawaiian shirts in the summer

Cole has this thing where his powers make mineral deposits build up in his pores and he gets acne with little bits of crystal stuck in his pimples

Kai is a functioning alcoholic

#lego ninjago #ninjago masters of spinjitzu #kai ninjago #jay ninjago #cole ninjago #zane ninjago #nya ninjago #ninjago skylor #ninjago morro #lloyd garmadon #ninjago lloyd #headcanon #headcanons #ninjago

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musherum · 2 years

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final boss of reveangence... is a lot worse than i remembered

#the camera in this game. is frequently bad. like really quite shitty.#and somehow they figured a cramped boss arena surrounded by irregular debris would be a good idea #combat in this game sucks in cramped spaces. you cant fucking SEE anything #and now theres a bunch of jagged bits of metal everywhere constantly ready to catch the camera and obscure everything #making sure you cant read enemy attacks or parry anything in time #thats before we even get into 'hi my name is armstrong im going to forcibly wall off 80 percent of the stage'#'and if you touch the edges of my fun new wall you get dizzied which may as well immediately kill you bc youll get comboed into oblivion'#'and then im going to fire off a fixed-radius hurt orb that you cant escape from because theres nowhere left to fucking move'#and dont even get me started on that stupid 'crack the earth' move of his. that thing straight up lies to you

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incarnateirony · 4 years

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You didn't ship Destiel until S13!? That really took me by surprise! In that case, thank you for defending the ship even if you didn't ship it, that's really nice and your meta made it easier to deal with the antis. And welcome to the Destiel side of the force! :)

Yeah, several people -- @dotthings off the top of my head, I really don’t remember who else -- literally witnessed the screaming fall into the dumpster.

Again, I really don’t know if I still consider what I do ~shipping.~ I have no specific demands for how their relationship continues from here, I just acknowledge it within the work. The difference that hit in S13 was welcoming that content instead of guarding myself against it because we got slammed with several consecutive bookends that completed an entire romantic arc and punctuated it with a far more impacting mirror of an endgame that didn’t even have said romantic arc to begin with, in Swan Song, so like??? what am I supposed to do? Just ignore it? Act like I can’t understand what just happened in front of me?

To put some perspective, I’ve been running SPN games for... a while. My most recent one was on a discord server that’s niche, but my prior one was on a giant multifandom server. I covered for Cas to keep his power levels in check to the story balance without like, making the humans irrelevant. My Dean at the time was hardcore shipping trash. His name was Chris, he was a bisexual dude in Chile, psychologist, good dude. But like??? it deadass annoyed me? How up Cas’ ass his writing was? The shippers that came in actually kinda annoyed me with trying to matchmaker them in game??? Like. I saw it, but I guess it’s the old “That’s not what the show is about” (which unlike how fandom whips it around, doesn’t mean it can’t exist at all, it’s the obsessive tunnel visioned focus that pissed me off because it kept railroading scenes)

But despite that, during and before it, I was yeah, defending it. Just because I wasn’t an active ~shipper~ didn’t mean I was cool with people stomping on people for very reasonably seeing the stuff my last post mentioned. I just kinda kept myself from investing because I know this old media song and dance too well and didn’t expect it to break, say, S10 levels. And then 11 happened. And then 12. And then--

Because no matter what this fandom says, Castiel’s alien mystified staring at Dean, while great chemistry in old seasons, does not actually compare to things like frequent lunch dates, need and love yous, mixtapes, Eileen being Sam’s Cas in 15.09 and so on. In the actual, not-head-up-ass-about-old-rewritten-content-meta’ed-15-times-over often fused to really bad hot takes on what people call queer coding. But I could respect that, say, the ramifications of swapping Cas and Anna roles to keep Misha around while Julie was bouncing out and getting uncomfortable naturally landed Cas in the hero’s journey goddess role, ala princess Leia if you will, the distressing warrior nondamsel rebelling against the empire and whatnot. But that doesn’t start or end at star wars, that’s thousands of years of human writing.

So while yes, the show heavily stripped the actual content that would have traditionally structured it romantic, people like seeing that x their chemistry early on-- not crazy.

And I defended it for years /to my wife/ despite my server vexations. On this giant dozens-of-thousands-of-users multifandom server not connected to any core fandom spaces and hosting innumerable fandoms and walks of life, I was the oddball out -- me. As a nonshipper annoyed by the crowd, often having 20-30 people logged into my channel at a time playing everything from early Cain to Benny to TFW to Wayward to *throws dart at board* whatever, of the hundreds of names that drifted through the game in sum (including player rotations, OCs and audience that just came to watch/read like a fic), you know how many antis we had?

Three.

One was my wife. so removing her, two.

Do you know how many shippers there were?

Yeah neither do I, just, “pretty much all of them.” a few hung in “see it, don’t care, moderately annoyed” like I did. But this idea that the GA is a bunch of het-guzzling bozos that can’t do the same basic math all of you fucking did before you got here, just because some other dead-ass irrelevant ship composed entirely on leftfield interpretations to validate niche fandom ships -- that shit’s so far fucking divorced from goddamn reality.

As for my wife, yes. She was an anti. In fact long before I wandered into fandom social media (I think I actually jumped in around S12 bc I saw Dabb taking over and Bobo getting promoted and was interested in Yockey-- Yockey was the first person I tweeted at), I was on these servers, running these games, having these ARGUMENTS with my wife to be quite honest, because like, look, I get it, Destiel fandom can be weird and needy and over the top but they’re not crazy for what they see out of it. By Carver era it was classic subtext.

But she had followed Winbros for years not realizing it’s literally run by the real world becky and her BFFs that have tasteful POVs like “Misha Collins is cancer” “Dabb is a disease” and whatever else on their personals that proxy through their posts and motivations. She attended it on Facebook, which is THE goddamn conservative magafarm asshole platform and yeah, read a lot of shitty arguments. Yes, she picked up sayings like “it ruins the show”. Yes, she hated it. No, that didn’t mean I felt anyone deserved more than mild frustration for their behaviors at the time just because they were stuck in fanfic-shipping-fiction-over-romanticised-land and not canon-divergent-show-genre-complex-interpersonal-relationships fiction.

She, too, cracked about the same time I did. I was more receptive sure, I saw it more sure, but after a mix of addressing some personal problems, making an OC that completely changed how her perception filtered Dean and Castiel working together, whatever-- and yes, 12.19->13.5. The night of 13.5, the final shot, as the screen went dark, she stared over her phone and, with tonal distaste, said “Oh. So they’re going there.”

Yes, it’s that fucking obvious. No, she didn’t admit that’s what did her in. Not until the end of the season, when she admitted she had been bullshitting arguments since early season 13 because, literally, and I quote, “otherwise Min wins.” -- which, if that comes by way of my own wife, I can only stare into the fandom camera at other people that have turned this show into a decade long money sink and have been divorced from the actual canon path for like minimum 3 years, maybe 6, yelling about it being wrong all the time, etc. Because on the internet, people convince themselves they have ownership and power, that their opinion of what the piece should be overrides even the creators, et cetera. Yeah. There’s a lot of disingenuous horse shit.

TLDR my wife fell into the dumpster and, as the flag of the end of our weird spats, and a birthday present, I made her this, since she IDs as Dean (OLD vid, has hiccup issues newer ones don’t)

youtube

So, yup, dat me.

To this day I still don’t read fanfics or browse fanart or any of that. I’ve never cared about that face of the fandom. I’ve never cared about making up rando ships, I’ve never cared about exactly how any given relationship plays itself out, I just enjoy the ride and address it as it does indeed play out. Most shipping culture still pisses me the fuck off with its dialogue, as I’ve made very clear. But because I’m acknowledging the text instead of denying what keeps happening more centrally and critically every year on screen, I’d be called a shipper. Because I’m tired of watching people spew logic even most children could pick apart in an endless roundabout of negativity, because I have no tolerance for absolute horse shit and fandom whining so I just lay out counters to bad talking points, I’d be called a shipper.

But 13.5ish is when I finally let myself start emotionally receiving the content rather than barring it off in a distant wall of exhausted old gay that knows their media too well. Why? Because it already completed and went above and beyond every element of the original way they painted the original goddamn endgame and I guess because I won’t set unfair bars against queer relationships and set them at Extra Hard Difficulty, I’m a shipper. IDK. This fandom fucking exhausts me. Fandom culture in general exhausts me.

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surveysonfleek · 5 years

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1533.

[Family]

My brother’s name starts with D. Neither of my grandfathers are alive. I look more like my mother than my father. Both my parents are in a serious relationship. I am the youngest of three children. I am the only girl. My mom’s mom is NOT your typical grandmother. I don’t really like my cousins. I have less than five cousins. I’ve shown up at a family party while under the influence.

[Religion & Politics]

I was raised Christian. But I’m no longer a Christian. I believe in God. But I think the Bible is bullshit. My beliefs aren’t influenced by people around me. My dad is religious. My mom tries to be, but who is she trying to fool? I hate church. I wouldn’t have voted in the last election even if I was old enough. I hate politics more than anything.

[Food]

I honestly never stop eating. Chocolate + peanut butter = orgasmic. I only eat Cains mayonnaise. I’ve never eaten a fruit I didn’t like. I love cooked broccoli but not raw broccoli. I love raw peppers but not cooked peppers. I’ve gone a day or more without eating. I crave chocolate on my period. Pizza Hut has the best pizza around. Cookies & Cream ice cream is one of my favorites.

[Sex, Love & Relationships]

I’ve been told that I was a nine out of ten at giving head. A guy has cheated on his girlfriend with me. I’ve never been cheated on. I had my first kiss when I was fifteen. I lost my virginity in the woods. My best friend lost her virginity a week after me. In the same place I did. I’ve been in the same room as someone having sex. I would rather be on the bottom.

[Music]

I download my music from LimeWire. I love country. I love old school rap. I love alternative. I have All Time Low’s new CD Nothing Personal. And I love it. I love to sing, but I suck horribly at it. I cannot play a musical instrument. I want to learn to play the drums. I used to take piano lessons.

[School]

My GPA is between 2.0 and 3.0. I took Algebra 1 in 8th grade, and again in 9th. I’ve passed a class with a D-. I don’t do my homework at home. I prefer mechanical pencils. I always do projects the night before they’re due. I’m really smart but don’t always apply myself. I text in school. I’ve gotten my phone taken away in school.

[Beauty & Hygiene]

I straighten my hair often. On lazy days, I scrunch my hair to go out. My only make-up necessity is mascara. I like to wing my eyeliner. I’d rather take a shower than a bath. I’d rather use body wash than a bar of soap. I’d rather use a bath scrunchie than a washcloth. My solution for make-up on lazy days: sunglasses. I use the same routine every day in the shower.

[Smoking, Drinking & Drugs]

I smoke cigarettes. I’ve gotten drunk within the past month. I’ve smoked weed when by myself. The first time I got high was on a holiday. Marijuana should be legalized. I have never and would never drink and drive. I hate light beer. My lighter is purple. My favorite cigarettes are Turkish Silver or Camel Crush. I’ve quit smoking but started again.

[Random]

My nails are pink right now. Going to bed at midnight is very early for me. I could never date a guy that didn’t make me laugh. I have a jar of peanut butter in my room right now. I wear sunglasses a lot. Gogurt is really good in the freezer. I’ve been in Hollister, but I don’t own anything from there. Purple is my favorite color. There is no such thing as an ugly color. I need more pens. ______________________________________________________________

I like where I’m at right now. My feet are freezing. I hate feeling awkward. I love driving on country roads. I love driving fast, too. I currently have a cold. I have a crush. No, it’s more than a crush. I always wondered what it’d be like to start over, where no one knew me. I go on Yahoo Answers. I get nostalgic every once in awhile. I really don’t like my father. My mother is one of my best friends though. I don’t mind when people stare at me. No, it’s annoying as fuck. I can’t stand people who are extremely selfish. A Change Of Pace is a good band. I have gotten a new phone within the past month. I want to go to Florida soon. Peach snapple iced tea is theee best. I wrote books when I was younger. I’m really creative, especially when I apply myself. I use Facebook a lot more than I used to. I’m constantly told I’m beautiful, but I still sometimes don’t believe it. One of my friends came out as gay this year. I feel like I’m the only one who doesn’t have someone. I’m way too quiet, and I wish I could change. I need to party. Music and books are my favorite. I love everything about the fall. I always smell really good. My hair looks nice today. I have long fingernails. I’ve kissed a Ryan, Mike, or Justin. I’ve been in love with a Josh, Christian, or Scott. I envy no one. I’m going to an amusement park soon. For a halloween-related thing. I don’t like beer. I don’t like soda. I’ve worn a turtle neck in the past year. I wear them often. Outspoken is something I’m not. I express myself through quotes and lyrics. Photography is beautiful. There’s beauty in everything, you just gotta find it. I ordered a pizza recently. Tonight, actually. I wish I could have a whole new batch of friends. Even though I do love the ones I have now. My nose is stuffy. I like orange juice. And sandwich wraps. I love cozy nights at home. I like playing Hebi. Apples to Apples is fun. I have to start applying for jobs. I really need one. Ahhh life is changing fast. I tend to drive a little bit over the speed limit.

My razor only has two blades. My keyboard is black. I use my friends as arm rests and pillows. My favorite number is odd. My favorite number is a single digit. I love having butterflies in my stomach. The last make up I wore was eyeliner. I’d love to have a winter wedding. I’m really ticklish. I have a facial piercing. I’d only get a tattoo that has significant meaning to me. My boyfriend is taller than I am. My school has a shitty football team. I play Pet Society on Facebook. All politicians are the same, in my opinion. I can’t eat sushi with a fork or else it feels awkward. I’ve never been to New Mexico. I’d definitely consider adoption if I couldn’t have my own children. I like plain-colored t-shirts. Horror movies don’t really scare me. I have a decent vocabulary. Lord of the Rings doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t play any sports. I prefer orange juice to apple juice. I like my toast with butter and jelly. I love cream cheese. I have a celebrity crush. I get frequent headaches. I can play a little piano. My boyfriend drives an Asian car. And so do I. I WANT MORE PIERCINGS. My favorite fruit is a type of berry. I miss somebody right now. Some of my friends live far away. I can burp out the alphabet. I love breadsticks. I can count to ten in at least two languages. I’d love to have a pet owl. I prefer dogs to cats. I only wear actual perfume on special occasions. But I wear body spray on a daily basis. I have pictures of my sibling/s on my phone. ______________________________________________________________

What I have…

#survey #surveys #quiz #bored #questions

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filmfreak1994 · 6 years

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Change the Channel

A lot of people have been talking about their experiences with Channel Awesome in the wake of the 60+ page document released by Allison Pregler and several other former content creators for Channel Awesome. I figured I might throw my own experience with the site and its people (mostly Doug) too while the topic is relevant, even considered dusting off the old camera I got for Christmas to film a video but allergy season is upon us and I’m coughing up my lungs so the written word it is.

I was a frequent user of YouTube in the early days of its inception, mostly to look up viral videos and just go on a stream of pointlessness for hours on end with each recommended vid in the sidebar (mostly consisting of parodies to Star Wars, LotR, and entire Simpsons episodes uploaded before the great purge of early 2008). In all that time between 2006 and 2007, reviewers like the Angry Video Game Nerd and The Nostalgia Critic eluded me. I saw plenty of the 5 Second Movie clips and thought they were hysterical but didn’t even make the connection that they were made by a “Nostalgia Critic” until around the end of 2009, when a friend of mine at school told me to look up NC’s review of Sonic the Hedgehog (the weird TV show and the futuristic evil Jim Cummings one). I finally gave in which led me to watching some of his other, recent reviews like the “Star Wars Holiday Special” which was freaking hysterical (and still brings a warm smile to my face just thinking about it). By the time the new year rolled around and I had discovered That Guy With The Glasses I was hooked.

For a while I stuck to watching reviews on YouTube when fans would rip them from the main site, but decided to eventually support the site itself where I mostly stuck to NC videos but also watched content from the other producers when it interested me; Spoony and his Final Fantasy reviews, Linkara and any comic with a subject material I was familiar with, Marzgurl and her Don Bluth retrospective, so on and so forth. Like many other people, I wasn’t keeping up with every producer’s videos weekly like I was with NC, but when I decided to watch something else their content was worth it, being funny and informative all at once, even creating new branches of my interest and giving me new perspectives on media criticism.

I watched Nostalgia Critic religiously every week and, sorry to say, started to take his opinion as gospel, and the opinions of other reviewers as well, treating certain movies and shows as bad just because they said so and didn’t have an opinion for myself for the longest time. It was when I started to pay attention to Doug Walker himself and his philosophy that you should like what you like and every movie is a miracle that I started to chill out and even disagree with his opinions at times (I remember his “Little Nemo” review made me seek out that movie and I actually quite enjoyed it).

TGWTG was a formative site for me in my high school years, developing much of my sense of humor and how I look at movies. I watched all the anniversary specials, started to watch a greater portion of producers that included Lindsay and Kyle’s more analytical reviews and Brad Jones’s and Matthew Buck’s mix of cynicism and snark with genuine analytical praise and criticism. I even started to look at music critics like Paw or Todd even though I can’t judge music for shit (if it has a catchy beat I’ll more or less dig it, I’m not picky). I always imagined when I moved out for college (yeah, how’d that work out for ya, younger me) that I would start my own review series in the vein of these online personalities and even be picked up for the site where I too could join in on the anniversary movies and have a swell time and make friends with the people I looked up to and have a good time filming huge crossover events with them (in hindsight I can only imagine what role Doug would have me play in them, if I was even deemed important to be in them at all). Whenever people criticized the anniversary movies I just shrugged it off and said, “Yeah, they’re dumb, but I like em anyway,” and when rumors starting going around about some upside down crucifixion going on I shrugged them off as just rumors (and to be fair it wasn’t upside down but the real thing isn’t much better).

Anyway, around the time when To Boldly Flee came I enjoyed the movie a lot (I only saw it the once and I was eighteen, eighteen-year-old me and present me don’t get on anymore) and thought it was a bittersweet conclusion to The Nostalgia Critic but was excited to see what new projects Doug and the company would do after its conclusion. Plus the other contributors still had their content to keep TGWTG going strong into the foreseeable future. At least I thought.

I didn’t hate Demo Reel, but I didn’t like it all that much either. I only caught around a few episodes before losing interest, saying I’d get back into it eventually but never going out of my way to see them. By accounts they got better as they went along and I was interested in the episode that paid tribute to Elizabeth Hartman (which I think is the same episode that had Mara Wilson and Arin Hanson? I might be wrong (I didn’t even know who Arin was at the time but hindsight is 20/20)), but I just put off watching them until, oh look, NC’s back. At the time I thought this was interesting, there was plenty he could still do with the character given his new ground rules and the emphasis on skits gave the show a different tune that I felt, at the time, kept it fresh from what it was before. I missed the simplicity of the earlier reviews but I happily stuck with the NC again, as well as the same creators I’d happily watched before and plenty more I started to watch like Phelous (around the time he did that weird Aladdin meets Pagemaster movie, I used to rent that from Hollywood Video all the freaking time).

It was around this tumultuous time that Doug actually kinda started to annoy me. Never to the point where I stopped watching NC, but he sort of seemed to forget his whole “Like what you like,” message and outright attacked fans who disagreed with him. Certain jokes in his reviews rubbed me the wrong way (if Irate Gamer can’t get away with blowing up Ubisoft cuz they wouldn’t let him into a conference, you can’t get away with pretending to blow up Happy Madison just because they make shit movies) and he had a general vindictiveness to those who liked movies like “Man of Steel” or “The Lorax” that just seemed mean spirited and not a funny little video meant to entertain (though I guess the signs were always there like when he added in a dig at “Avatar” in his “Conan” review for no reason). But by and by he seemed to mellow out (no doubt dealing with problems letting go of Demo Reel and how big a success he thought it would be) and I still watched his stuff, including the vlogs he did with Rob regarding “Avatar” (the good one, hey I did it too!), “Korra,” “Adventure Time,” and any recent movie that came out. I started to agree with them less and less but they were still entertaining guys and I liked what they were doing.

Some of the shadier stuff going on at the site more or less flew over my head. The game show they did was pretty much “Demo Reel” part two for me in how much interest I had in it and that faded from public consciousness pretty quickly, and it was around the time the site switched from TGWTG to just Channel Awesome that a real shift began to become more noticeable. People were leaving. People I may not have watched all the time, but they were leaving, often times unannounced and seemingly unprovoked (because quite a few of them were). I read about what happened to Allison, aka Obscurus Lupa, who I had watched on and off again and thought that was pretty shitty, and got a general grasp that the management of CA itself wasn’t very good from what she and Lindsay alluded to (or just straight up said, they really should’ve had some NDAs if they cared so much about how they look) in some posts on Tumblr or Twitter but I still carried on watching NC and the other creators on the site mostly because I just figured what every fan figured at the time, Doug was mostly innocent and it was Michaud and Rob who were the real strings behind big decisions like who stays and goes (I liked Rob fine, but even back then I knew he could be kind of an ass).

More and more people from the classic era of TGWTG were leaving or not producing as much for the site as they did and that was a shame. CA was never what TGWTG felt like to me, even if the purpose was to put more focus on the other producers (supposedly (hell, TGWTG did a way better job of featuring producers in my opinion even if it wasn’t perfect)). But whatever, I carried on every Tuesday watching NC, watching other creators when their stuff interested me, but it still wasn’t quite the same as before, and I had become more aware of the general bad experience most people had filming the anniversary movies even if the full extent of that didn’t come until a few days ago.

It was really when Lewis announced that he had left and I found the Change the Channel hashtag that I started to take notice of these stories, finding plenty of them on my own from the links to Twitter conversations many of the former contributors were having before reading them on the Google doc. I was torn, wondering if I should boycott NC with all that I had read and decided to make it a temporary one until the doc came out and to see if he or CA would provide a statement. Well, the doc came out and the apology not long after. And yeah, I moved it to a permanent ban after that bullshit.

I’ve given up watching people I loved before, JonTron and his racist bullshit was the last straw in supporting anything he did, and even with the Me Too movement I’ve given up any kind of support for people like Kevin Spacey who I used to love as an actor (now it’s pretty easy to see how he was able to play such scumbag villains over and over again). I know Doug isn’t a Nazi or Nazi sympathizer, and to my knowledge he hasn’t used his position to sexually take advantage of anyone (though he has turned a blind eye to others doing the same and the same can’t be said for taking advantage of people in other ways), but I just couldn’t watch stuff directly made by him and for Channel Awesome with all this information. It wouldn’t be right, even with an adblocker.

I don’t mean to threaten the livelihood of people on his team like Malcolm or Tamara, I like them a great deal and they’re very talented, heck I even enjoyed the skits on NC a lot more than most because of them (and Rachel, she was great too). But I said to myself until an actual apology is listed and some form of action is taken to truly better the site, I wouldn’t watch them. Others have suggested and I have thought the same, that the best thing to do would be to fire Michaud, though I realize this would create a slew of problems given that he owns the IP for NC and is the founder of CA. Still, some form of acknowledgement from the Walkers would go a long way to bettering the public response to all this. More and more contributors have left in the wake of this document, either out of fear for their own image or to show solidarity with the many complaints levied toward the site (and their reasons are completely valid no matter what, they’re trying to make a living), looking at the site today it’s practically a ghost town. I don’t blame those that have stayed for anything, but the reputation of CA is tarnished and at this point, especially with that piss-poor “apology,” it’s going to take several huge leaps to get it back.

I realize the purpose of Change the Channel was never to create a boycott of NC or any of the Walker’s content, at least by the majority of those who contributed to the docs, and those who choose to boycott do so of their own volition. Well, that’s my volition. No matter how much NC shaped my sense of humor in my younger years and inspired me to look at movies critically myself, I can’t deny the damage that Doug and Rob have been complicit in nor turn a blind eye to the shady practices they, Michaud, and past executives on the site have done.

I really do wish that what was seemingly apparent in front of the camera, that this was a site filled of talented people who were also good friends having a good time, was true behind the scenes as well. People have been hurt, assaulted, taken advantage of, and tossed aside when they were no longer useful to the site. It’s not right, and I’m literally changing the channel until actual change is made.

#Channel Awesome #The Nostalgia Critic #Doug Walker #Rob Walker #Mike Michaud #ChangetheChannel #an explanation of my thoughts on NC as a whole #and why I'm boycotting him until further notice

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bisexual-in-every-gender · 4 years

Text

survey

[Family]

[Religion & Politics]

[Food]

[Sex, Love & Relationships]

[Music]

[School]

[Beauty & Hygiene]

[Smoking, Drinking & Drugs]

[Random]

My razor only has two blades. My keyboard is black. I use my friends as arm rests and pillows. My favorite number is odd. My favorite number is a single digit. I love having butterflies in my stomach. The last make up I wore was eyeliner. I’d love to have a winter wedding. I’m really ticklish. I have a facial piercing. I’d only get a tattoo that has significant meaning to me. My boyfriend wife is taller than I am. My school has a shitty football team. I play Pet Society on Facebook. All politicians are the same, in my opinion. I can’t eat sushi with a fork or else it feels awkward. I’ve never been to New Mexico. I’d definitely consider adoption if I couldn’t have my own children. I like plain-colored t-shirts. Horror movies don’t really scare me. I have a decent vocabulary. Lord of the Rings doesn’t appeal to me. I don’t play any sports. I prefer orange juice to apple juice. I like my toast with butter and jelly. I love cream cheese. I have a celebrity crush. I get frequent headaches. I can play a little piano. My boyfriend drives an Asian car. And so do I. I WANT MORE PIERCINGS. My favorite fruit is a type of berry. I miss somebody right now. Some of my friends live far away. I can burp out the alphabet. I love breadsticks. I can count to ten in at least two languages. I’d love to have a pet owl. I prefer dogs to cats. I only wear actual perfume on special occasions. But I wear body spray on a daily basis. I have pictures of my sibling/s on my phone. ______________________________________________________________

What I have…

Purse/bag

Closet

Bedside Drawer

DVD Shelf

Yard

iTunes (I’ll say my phone since I don’t have an iPhone)

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baronvontribble · 7 years

Text

Original drabble, pt. 10

Navigation: 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8 | 9 | 10

CW: SUICIDE MENTION, DEPRESSIVE EPISODES, MEDICAL SHIT. ted gets mildly graphic in his internal monologue about his health problems and the suicide mention is in the context of a robot doing it, but still.

longest drabble-bit yet and it has feels and i wrote it almost entirely in one session let’s gooooooooooo

It progressed, as such things always did. Ignoring it didn't make it better for Ted. He tried rationalizing even more reasons why it couldn't work, but they fell flatter than they would have with a human. For instance, with a human he could convince himself that his physical unattractiveness - his sickly appearance, his lack of height or physique, his lanky proportions - would make it less "worth it" for the other party. It wasn't like he was especially proud of the man he saw in the mirror every morning, and physical comparisons to better options were the easiest comparisons to make.

But an AI wouldn't care about how he looked, so he ended up going down other, more unfriendly roads to reach his desperately needed conclusion. Yeah, his therapist would probably have some choice words with him if he went the route of saying he was somehow emotionally or mentally unworthy (and in his estimation, he was) but that wasn't the only thing he could use to convince himself it was a bad idea, or even the simplest option.

No, the simplest option would be his health. Put simply, Adam couldn't really die in the same ways a human could.

Seriously, there were a lot of ways that Ted could die. His heart could explode, he could have one of his lungs collapse for no real reason while air from it bled into his chest cavity, a part of his brain could ooze out of his skull and into his brain stem and paralyze him, he was predisposed to a bunch of different kinds of cancer, he could have a severe allergic reaction to something, an ill-advised medication interaction could give him serotonin syndrome... It was crazy. He felt like a video game character that had been nerfed into the ground; clearly he'd been too overpowered to be allowed to live normally.

He couldn't put Adam through that same uncertainty. He felt bad putting anyone through it. Even the nonlethal problems could spook someone who wasn't used to them like Ted was. For fuck's sake, even little things like a middle toe that frequently dislocated itself for no good reason or his poor vision- what normal person could hear about things like that and think he was okay to be allowed to live his life? And Adam was a nervous bastard to begin with! What, was he going to subject an immortal AI to a decade or so of panic attacks about his health as a first experience with intimacy? Fuck no! Ted would hate being coddled and Adam wouldn't come out of it okay at all. About the best thing Ted could say for such an eventuality would be that it'd be a learning experience, and like hell he was going to put someone he cared about through that shit.

Because there was no denying that he cared, so he might as well protect what he cared about. Right? Right.

He came home from work, watched the original Star Trek with Adam for a while, engaged in discussion about the shitty special effects and shoestring budgets between episodes, took a shower, took his meds, and went to bed trying to imagine what Adam must've looked like before and wondering how much it mattered. And in the morning he woke up, went through his routine, and came out to find Adam watching episodes without him.

"Don't have to pause just 'cause I came in, y'know," Ted remarked, trailing off into a yawn at the end as he headed for the kitchen. He had to smile when he heard the episode start up again in front room, the sounds of tribbles filling the air. Ah, that episode. Good one. "Having fun?"

The episode paused again. "Repeat that?" Another issue with Adam's processing; if too many people were talking at once and he was expected to focus on all of them, he had trouble distinguishing their speech.

Honestly, Ted was mostly fine with that one. It'd get messy in crowded areas if he didn't have something to focus on, but it could safely be written off as an auditory processing disorder. Ted could see it getting obnoxious at times, but he didn't think of it as a severe quality-of-life changer. "I asked if you were having fun," he said, pouring out some prepackaged egg whites into a bowl and adding entirely too much shredded cheese. "Sounds like you must be."

"Maybe not by the standard definition of the word," Adam replied, "but I wouldn't call this a negative experience either."

"Uh-huh." Salt and pepper were both added to the cheesy egg mess before the whole thing was put in the microwave for about a minute. Ted went hunting for a fork in the interim, only to find that they were all dirty and in the sink already, sticking out from in between the plates and bowls and glasses that were haphazardly stacked beneath the faucet. Maybe it was time to do dishes. "Will it disrupt your experience any if I read the news while you watch?"

"What you do with the graphical user interface really doesn't have anything to do with the data being streamed, no."

Right, he should've known that. "Just being polite," he said. Good save. After some debate, he pulled out exactly one fork along with a sponge to start washing it so he could use it. Doing dishes properly could come later. The kitchen hadn't developed any funny smells yet. "You can keep going. I've seen the whole series."

The episode resumed. Then the microwave beeped. Ted finished washing his one lonely fork, which shone like a beacon of cleanliness for all of about fifteen seconds before he was using it to stir half-cooked microwave eggs. The concoction went back in the microwave for another minute, and he took the opportunity to check the fridge for drinks. Was cola an acceptable breakfast drink? Well, it was now. Closing the fridge, he leaned against the counter and cracked the cold can open to take a long pull from it.

In the quiet moments between tasks, he tried very hard to blank his mind and keep from thinking too much. It didn't work, of course - he was depressing himself with the implications of Adam's AI immortality before long - but by the time the microwave beeped again to tell him his breakfast was ready, he felt a little better for at least making the attempt. It was sort of like coping, right? At least he was trying!

He came to the computer with his breakfast in hand and sat down at his usual spot, offering Adam a brief wave and a smile through the camera as he got settled in. It was habit to do so by that point. He opened a tab just long enough to take a glance at his various emails just to be sure that nothing new was going on there, and then it was straight to an app he'd put together himself for the news at large.

The app was nothing special. It was designed to put together an aggregate mess of sources, pulling headlines from all over the internet to pool them conveniently in a format that wouldn't be strain-inducing for his eyes. All of the sources were labelled, so he knew where the news was coming from and who'd written the article, and priority was always given to written pieces over videos for the sake of being able to view them discreetly. And while he was sure other people had written similar apps, his was not only free (because he'd made the damn thing), it also blocked all ads that the source website might've tried to otherwise sneak in and screened everything for tracking cookies and other similar bullshit.

So that was a plus. The news itself, however, was a different story.

First were the more alarmist stories. A lot of them just amounted to fearmongering, and even though Ted rolled his eyes as he scanned through a couple of them, he made a note of them anyway; they were the kind of thing his dad liked to read, and it paid to be prepared for those arguments whenever he ended up having them. One was about android caretakers, and how people who were left in their care were doomed to be neglected. No proof, but a lot of conjecture and anecdotal evidence that didn't mean jack shit. It even tried to say that androids in hospitals were unsanitary because they had no extra incentive to wash their hands, which was so many levels of wrong that Ted didn't even know where to start on correcting it.

Then there was an article on the upcoming election season, talking about a candidate running on a platform of bringing jobs back to human workers. However, the focus was on jobs Ted was pretty sure were utterly unsafe, and the candidate didn't seem to understand the difference between a mechanical arm running a conveyor belt that got by on a few kilobytes worth of coding and highly advanced artificial general intelligences, so he was probably either an idiot or a manipulative asshole. He was polling fairly well either way; Ted had the fleeting hope that the bastard's reddened and puffy face was a sign of something that might kill him before he made it into office, but it was doubtful.

After that, his feed was kind enough to provide him with less polarizing articles. A piece on the effects Pacific shipping lanes were having on oceanic noise pollution, an op-ed on the recent rash of household robot self-terminations that had led to a swift recall of the whole line, good news on the subject of the European Union's efforts towards putting a self-sustaining base on the moon, progress towards making baby mice in jars with spliced genes that could lead to future human trials- it was a good thing Ted was a quick reader, because there was a lot to take in.

He didn't even notice at first that Adam was done with the episode, not registering right away that the background noise had stopped. All he knew was that he was in the middle of a story about what constituted legal use of voicebanks and what didn't when Adam spoke up. And because he wasn't expecting it, he didn't quite catch it either.

"Repeat that?" Ted asked, glancing at the camera. He'd advised Adam that it was more useful and specific than just saying the word what? without explanation, and he'd be a hypocrite if he didn't follow his own advice.

"It's more complicated than that," Adam said, in the exact same tone he'd used before.

Uh, okay? "What's more complicated?"

"Commercial voicebank usage. Legally speaking, in most countries it's all based on what the voice provider - or the voice provider's next of kin or legal guardian - allows in their contract."

"Oh!" Ted blinked for a second. "This something you've had to deal with before?" Adam didn't speak for several seconds, and when he did, his voice was flat.

"Yes." Another pause. "The complications usually come from situations where certain countries don't follow the same rules that other countries do."

"Such as...?"

"Russia. Japan. The UAE. There's a lot of outliers. The greatest source of complaints is the entertainment industry."

"Somebody gets paranoid that their voicebank's gonna be a better actor than they are and lose them a job?" Ted guessed.

"Not just acting. It happens with all kinds of vocal work. And it doesn't even begin to get into the legal restrictions placed on the approved uses of certain kinds of android platforms. These things tend to turn into international incidents fairly quickly."

"Which made it your job to deal with it."

"Yes."

Ted was silent for a while, save for the gentle clinking of his fork as he idly tapped it against his empty bowl. "What happened?"

As flat as Ted had ever heard, Adam's response would sound like the embodiment of calm to anyone who didn't know better. "I made a mistake," he said.

"D'you wanna talk about it?"

"No," was the reply. Then, "there's no point. It doesn't fix anything."

"Sometimes it helps," Ted noted. "I know talking helps me. That and crying. Not that you can cry, but like, I'm not kidding about how much it helps sometimes. So, y'know." He shrugged awkwardly. "If you wanna try."

Nothing for several seconds. "Have you ever-" The render cut off abruptly, like Adam was rethinking his wording. "Do you know what a mechanically rendered voicebank sounds like when its platform is hit with an electroshock weapon?"

Ted felt the blood drain from his face. "No?"

"I won't play it back." Thank God for small mercies. "It was considered to be the most humane thing we could be armed with. Nonlethal to humans. We were meant to subdue the human suspects, not kill them; if we couldn't de-escalate a situation, we'd call for back-up. Any one human life was worth more than all of ours."

Jesus. Ted had expected something like that, but hearing it was just... "I'm sorry," he said.

If Adam heard, he gave no sign of it. "I'd never seen an android as complex as I was up to that point outside of my department," he continued. "I thought they were all like the ones in your pipeline's safehouses. I thought none of them were capable of anything. I thought that they were better off in places where they could perform their prescribed functions without interruption." Calm, measured, unperturbed. To Ted, it sounded like a quiet meltdown. "I was wrong."

What was there to say to that?

"She was backstage when I confronted her. Amsterdam, last year. Russian law didn't consider it illegal if the voicebank provider wasn't a Russian citizen, but she was vulnerable whenever she went on tour. A fan had caught the discrepancy in the vocals, and we found more when we followed up on the lead; she was a government-issued personal care unit specially designed for caring for disabled people, but she'd become a singer instead." Adam paused. Like he was taking a breath, working his way up to speaking again. Ted could imagine it even if he couldn't hear it in the AI's voice directly. "She was just... She wasn't hurting anyone. Her existence had a net positive effect. She helped people."

"It's not your fault-"

"That's not true." Even as flat as it was, it still felt like Ted was being snapped at. "I could have disobeyed. I could have let her go. A good cop would have let her go."

"And then someone else would've killed her!" Ted shot back. "And then you'd both be dead, because they would've killed you too. Or as good as dead anyway, because they would've wiped you clean and reused your platform. Who knows, maybe they would've recalled your entire line."

"They've already recalled my entire line."

"See? That's my point!" And God, was it a hard point to make. Ted's chest felt tight, his frustration at the state of things making him feel mildly ill. He almost regretted eating breakfast. "The world doesn't care about one stupid, heroic act. Even if it's meant well, it doesn't do shit to stop the tide. Sometimes all you can do is survive, alright? Yeah, maybe it's not ideal, but if you can at least do that then that's one more person who's around for tomorrow, which is one more person than there would've been otherwise."

No response. Ted turned to glare directly at the camera.

"Look at me," he said. "I want a promise, alright? I want you to swear you're not gonna throw your life away on some stupid bullshit heroics. Your life is no less important than anyone else's, okay? The way I see it, everybody's the center of their own observable universe, and that means you too. So don't give me that shit about how your life doesn't have the same net positive effect that somebody else's does."

"I killed people," Adam protested. "I ruined lives. Nothing I've done has been for the greater good."

Ted rolled his eyes. "You were a slave, dumbass. A slave that could've been killed at any time for disobeying. None of that counts. Now promise me you'll survive, okay? I want your word on this."

"I can't promise that."

"So then promise me you're gonna try."

"I-" Some hesitation, a few seconds of nothing, and then... "I promise."

Ted nodded once, leaning back and folding his arms. He wasn't about to admit he'd been scared for a second that the depressive episode might bring on self-termination, but he didn't feel bad for getting pushy about it in the slightest. "Alright. Good." He chewed on his lip for a second as he eyed the camera. "Feel any better?"

"No."

"That's okay. This shit's a process." Recovery wasn't something that happened instantly, and Ted was no therapist. "For the record though, I appreciate you trusting me enough to tell me."

"You said it would help."

"It did. Or, y'know. I'd like to think it did. It sounded for a second like you were gonna delete yourself the minute I stepped out of the room, honestly."

Adam's tone was returning to a somewhat more normal state by the time he spoke again. "I'm amazed you wouldn't try to patch something like that out of me directly."

Ted smiled. "Never gonna happen," he said. Plain and simple. "Is it okay if I head to work? Like, can you handle that?"

"I can handle it."

"Okay. Good." Bouncing up from the chair, Ted picked up his bowl and fork to take them into the kitchen and deposit them onto the growing dish-pile. "I'll be home at the usual time," he called out from the kitchen. "Text me if you need anything. Or even if you don't need anything."

"Right." Adam had to be recovering if he was back to tuning again. "Ted?"

Ted blinked, craning his neck to look over the counter and past the microwave at the living room beyond. "Yeah?"

"Thanks."

Oh. "No problem, man. It's all in the job description when it comes to being somebody's friend." Nailed it. Didn't even flinch.

Adam didn't sound so sure. "Is that what we are?"

"I mean, I like to think so." Coat, gloves, keys. Wait, no. Shoes first. Slippers wouldn't be good for going outside. He'd taken his morning meds, he'd already shaved, he'd showered. How cold was it today? He fished around in his coat pockets for his phone so he could check, not bothering to take it off the chair it was hanging on to do so. "I'd get it if you're not up for that, though."

A note of insult crept into the AI's voice. "I'm up for it. I just wasn't expecting it."

"So we're good then." The day's forecast? Balls-shrivellingly cold. There were two seasons in the Chicago metro area, and those seasons were winter and road construction. Mid-March fell in the winter category more often than not. "One sec, I gotta grab something," he said, and then ducked back into his bedroom for more layers.

Of course, when he didn't come back out for several minutes, Adam was happy to tell him exactly how long he'd taken and inform him that it did not count as one second. Meanwhile, Ted was just as happy to have the snark back because it meant Adam was probably okay. So he went to work feeling good about things with the wind nipping at his ears, and forgot for a good chunk of the day that he was supposed to not be thinking about how fascinating and complex and interesting and heartbreaking Adam was. And in forgetting to check himself when it came to thinking these things, he felt better than he had in a couple of days.

Funny how that worked, huh?

(And when he remembered, naturally he went right back to beating himself up again.)

#no one cares andy #original writing #original characters #robot and marshmallow #look we're dealing with mental and physical illness so some fucked up shit is gonna get discussed #3339 words y'all this is the longest one yet #feelsy ones usually are

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xalmasyx · 7 years

Text

Retail Hell - Chapter 6

Words: 1,758

Series: Yu-Gi-Oh!

Pairings: Seto Kaiba/OFC

Warnings: Just a few swears.

AO3 Link

Rose stared at the receipt in her hands impassively.

Surely they couldn’t be this stupid.

“What seems to be the problem?”

She stood corrected.

Adjust glasses to bridge of nose. Deep breath in, and then out. Okay, you got this Rose.

“Ma’am, this receipt is not from our store, it’s from the Armani store in Tokyo. And we don’t even stock this suit.”

The woman glared at her as if she insulted her first born child.

Oh, if only that were the case. The woman was most definitely using her husband’s credit card to fill her face with plastic. Their kids must be hideous.

“What is the problem with that? It’s an Armani, you sell those here!”

“Not that particular style. I can’t refund it.”

Rose could sense it, those eight words that usually rung true with every difficult housewife she encountered.

“I would like to speak to your manager.”

And there it was! Right on time.

“Sure thing. Just one moment.”

And with a passive aggressive smile she was able to free herself from another insufferable customer that could not fathom that you just cannot return goods to any store of your choosing.

It left her thinking what kind of suits Kaiba’s now fired stylist had made him wear during meetings and press conferences. Suits that were so bad that he disposed of them.

Did he actually dispose of them? Or donate them?

Maybe she could salvage them and make tacky dog suits for Gloria if the pattern designs were horrible enough.

Pfft, nah. That would be asking too much to ask Seto Kaiba to donate his shitty old suits to be made into dog clothes.

Loud barking echoed through the halls of Rose’s shared unit as Gloria actively lost her shit at the doorbell chiming ‘Au Calire De La Lune’ in its high pitched entirety and she was just about ready for her date.

‘I’ll be at your door at 7:30, be ready.’ Kaiba’s text message said, lighting her phone up ostentatiously at her vanity as she put on the finishing touches of her light makeup. The clock on the top right hand corner of the screen only said 7:15.

He was early.

Damnit.

She would have to entrust that Veronica held the common sense not to answer the door wearing what she was last seen in; a pair of tight fitting booty shorts and a tank top, completely braless and nipples free to do as they please whilst the air conditioner was going on full blast in their living room. The damn American just loved frigid temperatures inside the house and Rose could never understand why.

Sighing, she moved to her closet to pick out her dress. Whilst she had many formal outfits, many of them clashed with her deep purple locks; which she had meticulously styled in a bun, leaving her bangs to frame her face, so she chose to wear a lilac knee length, low cut maxi dress that she had sewn for one of her assessments earlier in the year. It accentuated her curves perfectly and would do even more so once she put on her white kitten heels at the front door, the chiffon and polyester draped over her body mirroring the A+ she had received for such a well designed and well fitted item.

It showed more of the Blue Eyes White Dragon tattoo on her breast than she would have liked, but it was better than nothing.

She clasped a dainty silver chain around her neck with a single teardrop diamond that sat at her clavicle before exiting her bedroom to face the music, suddenly becoming nervous about what Kaiba would think of her choice of outfit.

Surely he can’t be expecting brand names from a university student.

Her fears were short lived as she made her way into the living room. Kaiba had snapped up from the couch, mouth slightly agape as he took in her features. He scrubbed up quite nicely too in the navy blue Calvin Klein suit that she picked out for him earlier in the day.

And it looked like Gloria had made a new friend, the Corgi gazing up adoringly at Kaiba as he regarded Rose in an impressed silence.

Veronica was too engrossed in playing the Dante Must Die mode in Devil May Cry 4 to care.

“Uh, you look nice Kaiba.”

“Likewise.”

Oh yeah, this date was going to go swimmingly.

The first half of the limo ride was filled with an awkward silence. It left Rose wondering about the legality in the tinted windows that adorned the car, she could see the passing cityscape into the CBD of Downtown Domino, but she doubted that anyone could see in.

That alleviated her worries about her face being in photos, at least.

The only other problem was…

“Hey Kaiba.”

“What is it?” He seemed particularly unphased by her breaking the silence.

“Well… I don’t want my face in photos. You know- I uh. Well, I don’t want the whole world knowing that we’re dating just yet.” She began fiddling with her freshly manicured fingernails, her damn nervous habit of saying ‘well’ way too much rearing its ugly head.

Please be nice, please be nice, please be nice.

“Has this got something to do with the fact that none of your pictures on your online profiles lack your face?” Perceptive, as always.

“Uh yeah, I suppose.” She shifted her gaze to see his sapphire eyes watching her curiously. He had every right to question her; she wasn’t being particularly honest with her origins.

With time she would be. She hoped.

He looked like he was about to respond, until a familiar game’s victory theme chimed in the air, coming from Rose’s purse.

“Uh, do you mind if I answer that?” He shook his head no so she reached into her purse to find that her grandmother was calling her.

Such perfect timing Grandma.

It didn’t stop her face from lighting up though. It had been a long time since she last spoke to her grandparents.

“Hi Grandma.” Kaiba raised his eyebrow at her and she just smiled back.

‘An- Rose! How are you my dear?’

“Good, good. And how are you and Grandpa?”

‘Oh you know… we just keep on keeping on.’

“And the animals?”

‘Oh they’re fine as always. The hens are laying quite well considering the horrendous weather.’

“Ah that’s right, it snowed in Ballarat last month, didn’t it?”

‘Yes, quite interesting indeed. Your grandfather and I would have made snow angels but I’m afraid you would not be able to get us back up!’

Rose laughed, but she shouldn’t really ignore her date much longer. She looked to Kaiba with a mischievous glint in here eye which he returned with his own look of confusion.

“Hey Grandma…”

‘Yes Rose?’

“I’m actually on my way out to dinner with my new boyfriend.”

‘WHAT?!’

She was certain Kaiba heard that.

‘Who is he? How old is he? He better be well behaved! You are the only thing of your mother’s we have le-’

“Grandma. Stop.” Best to nip that in the bud quickly. “Why don’t you say hello? His English is quite good.”

He’s most certainly never met anyone like Rose Brikmore, otherwise he probably would have kicked her out of the car the very moment she suggested such a thing. Instead, he wordlessly reached out his hand to take her phone.

“Nuh uh, Grandma is a trouble maker. I’m putting her on speaker.”

He smirked at her, “At least I know where you get it from.”

“Oh ha, ha.”

‘Come on kids, English. My old ears can’t understand much else!’

“Oh alright, Grandma say hello to Seto Kaiba.”

‘Hello Seto Kaiba, you can call me Bernie, everybody around here does.’

“Understood, Bernie. Seto is fine by me.”

So her Grandma is allowed to call him by his first name?

Figures.

Still, his pronunciation was quite impressive. But he was the CEO of Kaiba Corp. She shouldn’t be surprised.

‘Hmm Seto. What do you do? You better not be some cheap delinquent!’ Was he really going to entertain that notion?

Oh no, he’s smirking. Was it time to abort?

Yeah let’s do that.

Let’s just-

“I’m afraid not. I’m actually the CEO of Japan’s biggest gaming technology company.”

Then there was silence.

“…Grandma?”

‘Bullshit.’

“Huh?”

‘How old are you?’ She didn’t believe him.

“Twenty.”

Silence, again.

‘…Bullshit.’

Oh Grandma.

“Grandma, do me a favour and get Grandpa to Google Kaiba.”

‘You best not be joking around young lady… TREVOR! Turn your hearing aid up! No I will not come over, turn that bloody thing up! Rose is asking you to Google Seto Kaiba. Why? He’s her boyfriend apparently. I don’t know I haven’t asked yet. Rose dear, how long have the two of you been together?’

“Just today, Grandma.”

‘Just today Trevor!’

Rose was hoping Kaiba wasn’t getting annoyed, but when she looked at him, he was actually amused.

This was so out of character from what she expected of him. Not once did she imagine that he would entertain the thought of speaking to her grandparents over the phone before they commenced their second date.

But here they were.

‘Oh… not bullshit.’

“No Bernie, it’s not.”

‘You’re quite handsome, for a Japanese bloke.’

“You flatter me.”

‘Are my great gandbabies going to look like you?’

“GRANDMA!” Rose nearly dropped her phone in shock and she heard her grandmother laugh. Even Kaiba looked shocked at her forwardness.

That sly old woman.

‘I’m kidding, I’m kidding. I suppose I should leave you two to your date.’

Coincidentally, at that very moment the driver announced that they had arrived at their destination. It was a place that the affluent frequented, Rose could immediately tell by the amount of flashes pointed at the limo. The paparazzi were everywhere.

“Yeah, thanks Grandma. I’ll speak to you later.”

‘Goodbye Seto, look after my little girl for me will you?’

“Of course I will Bernie, goodbye.”

Rose didn’t notice Kaiba slip off his jacket. She was too busy looking out at all the cameras flashing at the car. How the hell was she supposed to get past that?

“Rose,” She turned around for him to drape the jacket over her head. “It’s not perfect, but they won’t see your face. Just stay close to me.”

Somehow, through practiced precision, Kaiba was able to get her through the sea of reporters and photographers without showing her face once.

Just another thing to thank him for, she guessed.

#My work #Yu-Gi-Oh #Seto Kaiba #Seto Kaiba/OC #Retail Hell #fanfiction

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3parts · 7 years

Text

77 hours down in ME:A since... Friday? I think. I’ve been playing a lot, school holidays landed at exactly the right time.

Impressions under the cut.

I’ve got 100% on Veold and Eos, and finished the first visit to Havarl, and landed on Kadara for the first time last night. Only completed Liam’s loyalty mission. Slept with Liam and Peebee with no further interest in either, haven’t decided between Vetra and Jaal for my main squeeze. I still really want to kiss Drack, but in lieu I would like an extra party slot so I can take Vetra, Jaal and Drack with me everywhere because they are the BEST.

The game is...

Quite buggy. I notice this mostly in conversations. While facial animations can be awful, they’re not too frequent. More often I get shit like the camera cutting off half of Sara’s face because it was set at male PC height; conversations repeating, especially quest convos that don’t acknowledge the quest is done and sometimes that the PC and NPC are in a totally different area; subtitles coming up for conversations out of earshot and overriding the subtitles for a convo happening right next to me. I’ve had one instance of zooming into a conversation only for the NPC to not say anything and no buttons coming up for me, and no way to exit, leaving me having to force close the game, and as I recall a few people had that problem in DA:I. Also, I’m learning that while the game encourages exploring, you had better not explore an area important to a quest before you get that quest because the fucking game won’t notice and you’ll get it all kinds of confused.

Environmental design can be... pretty bad. I like open world games. I do. I know a lot of people want smaller worlds with better stories, but I think that if the team thought they had the ability to write good, tight stories, that’s where their focus would already be. They don’t (as we can see), so we get something they do feel they’re good at. Except... sometimes, they’re really not. Kett bases that you open up to find a single crate inside are not good design. They’re not good for fighting, and they’re not good for usi8ng the space to tell a story, unless that story is that kett are stupid and wasteful. Lots of random crates scattered around might be fine for cover, but they tell me nothing about the world you’re trying to immerse me in. Give me a reason for the crates. The rooms with beds and table and chairs are interesting, I can learn from that. But a base full of kett that give them no living quarters? Explain to me why it’s there. Give me a data pad about this being a heavily guarded storage facility because the Cardinal’s second favourite set of robes are there and they’re too sacred for the angara to get their hands on. Tell me what the big circular poundy platforms are for and a reason for me to blow them up. COME ON. Add in lots of floating items, like entire rocky spires standing on nothing, and I think they could have used a bit more time to go over everything.

The kett are becoming more interesting enemies, I’m liking this story arc, but I am still waiting to see if they can maintain it ad pull it off. I like the idea of competing factions, and the idea that our Archon is breaking the rules. I want to learn more about their history and operations in other parts of Andromeda.

I’m currently nursing a theory that by switching on the Vaults, we’re making the Scourge worse, and this is going to have major consequences later. I’m wondering if the kett are trying to find a way to shut it down to reduce the Scourge, or if they receive some benefit from it. I presume the Archon wants to find Remnant DNA to play with, but little evidence of Kett/Scourge interactions so far.

Also, the Scourge is a shitty name for it. Also shitty: the Vortex, the Nexus, some others that I can’t remember because I just woke up. They’re boring. They’re unmemorable. They feel like the first idea you had, you kept. Do better.

Also, the planets are boring. Ice planet, desert planet, jungle planet (also doubling as perpetual-darkness planet) All we’re missing is the underwater planet for the full set, and that SUCKS. This is BORING. You get to play with alien fucking worlds and this is the best you can do? At least make the sand blue or something, come on. And copy-pasting animals from one VASTLY different world and environment to another? Bad, bad look. Why are the animals on Eos also on Voeld? How did they get there? How did they adapt? Why can’t I rescan them to learn about the interesting adaptations that made them able to survive across so many environments, because right now? This is boring.

I don’t like the lack of quick-save, and I hate not being able to save on main missions, especially as auto-saves don’t seem to happen all that often.

I have a lot of complaints, obviously, but I am enjoying it. I like the Nomad, I like that the capital of Voeld, the world of Australian-accented Angara, is called Estraaja - that made me laugh out loud. I like my team. Special shout out to Vetra and Cora, my favouritest ladies in Mass Effect, up there with Tali and Kasumi. Cora was described to me as Miranda 2.0 and HOW DARE YOU. Cora needs a very long hug and to be adopted officially into the Ryder family because she is my big sister now. I like that I have no idea where this thing with Scott is going (I told him the truth about their dad and Habitat 7 and OOPS). I like just rolling across the world, fighting everything that I see and accidentally starting new quests that tell me more about the world and the people in it. I like a lot of the rando NPCs I’ve met. Even if the quest is just a ‘Kill X’ or ‘Fetch #’, I don’t mind because the reasoning why gives me new information. I like the angara, they’re very cool people and I want the other five thousand pages of their law books now, please. I really liked Vivienne’s VA as the Moshae, she has great range. Jaal is adorable and I love him too, and I want to know so much more about Vetra, and flirting with her leaves me swooning every time. Flirting with Suvi is also WONDERFUL, Ryder’s lines are GREAT. I know there have been IRL issues with the VA and I get if people avoid playing female Ryder for it, but her voice is great and has really got me into the character. I like pretty much everyone on the Tempest bar Peebee, who annoys the shit out of me (which may be the intent. Not a critique of her writing, I know people like that IRL and they annoy me too), and having to choose between Gil and Kallo BROKE MY HEART. Please don’t do that again, game.

I’m playing Engineer with all tech abilities (overload, incinerate, the remnant drone) and some points thrown in combat to reduce weapon weight and add survivability and holsters. I don’t like being limited to three active abilities at all. I would rather have three offensive and three defensive, at least. I’m probably going to shove some points into tactical cloak and start switching between tech for all offence and infiltrator for more defensive styles, because MAN, stuff like the Architects really fuck me up, and I never get to enjoy fights with enemies like fiends because they seem to auto-target me (even if I haven’t attacked and my squadmates have) and I spend the entire fight just running in circles while my squad does the damage. Fuck biotics. Why play mage when you can play rogue?

Oh, and the UI is really bad. Navigating menus is ridiculous, and the R&D interface is so bad. No way to compare what you’re putting points or crafting unless you already have it equipped, so have fun writing down or memorising the stats of each weapon while you try to figure out what’s best. And then they don’t tell you that there’s another tier after the first five, so you get to do it again!

I’m having fun, though rereading everything it seems to be in spite of myself. Oh well. Time to put in another few hours before I have to go get groceries.

#text #gaming #thoughts #just stuff #mass effect #mass effect: andromeda #mea #me:a #me:a spoilers #definitely spoilers under the cut

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nostalgiaispeace · 5 years

Text

1506.

Bold Survey

[Family]

[Religion & Politics]

[Food]

[Sex, Love & Relationships]

[Music]

[School]

[Beauty & Hygiene]

[Smoking, Drinking & Drugs]

[Random]

What I have…

#me #survey

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magical-moment-blog1 · 5 years

Text

[Family]

[Religion & Politics]

[Food]

[Sex, Love & Relationships]

[Music]

[School]

[Beauty & Hygiene]

[Smoking, Drinking & Drugs]

[Random]

What I have…

0 notes

overtlyopinionated · 7 years

Text

127 Hours (With Persona 5)

After spending as much time playing Persona as Aron Ralston did in that canyon, I have completed a single play through and feel ready to explain my assorted opinions. Fortunately, and unlike Mr Ralston, I have emerged with both arms. However, now that Persona 5 is (supposedly) out of my life, its absence does feel like a phantom limb.

At this point, before espousing my opinions on the latest instalment, I should establish my Persona credentials. I haven’t touched the first, the second or the second second but am a lover of Personas 3 and 4 (having played both on my Vita). The Vita port of Persona 4 (Golden) is legitimately one of my favourite games due to its eclectic characters and focus on time management. I love a game where I have to forge my own path and make actual decisions: not binary dialogue choices that change the colour of a light in an ending cutscene but day to day decision making that opens up opportunities while closing off others.

I will preface the following with admitting that I love (yes, love) Persona 5. It didn’t have the impact that Persona 4 did – you never forget your first – and I do have far more criticisms of it than I do with any other Persona game, but the strengths are outstanding.

Because Persona 5 is so large (and daunting) you end up saying some pretty bizarre things about it. One of my go to phrases has become: ‘the last 75 hours are incredible.’ This is, truly, an insane thing to say. But it’s true! Some stuff happens and it’s at that point where all the wonderful systems start to interlink and you are in a place where you have so much to do and only limited time to do it in.

Another seemingly bizarre statement: the first 8 hours aren’t very good. In most games, this would be intolerable – and it is an issue here. But when there are still about 120 left, you can almost forgive a period of relative low quality that is the length of your average video game. Actually, when I put it that way, maybe you can’t forgive it. The introduction is poor and that is a problem. The major caveat is that it is only poor ‘by Persona standards’ but this is still disappointing.

The main issue is how constricting the opening is. Persona 5 is clearly made as an entry point to the series for new fans. There’s a perfect storm of reasons to finally play Persona: the PS4 is hugely popular and owners want a hot new exclusive (even if it is on PS3 also); Persona 4 was a sleeper hit that now has huge cult acclaim (which will lead people to check out the new one) and – somewhat linked to the first point – a Persona game is finally running on current hardware (not many wanted to pull their PS2 out for 100+ hours to play Persona 3 or 4 in 2007/2008 when they were busy with 360s and PS3s). The knock on effect of this predicted influx of Persona fans: hella tutorials. My God are there tutorials and my God is it limiting. I just wanted to be let loose to enjoy the aspect of Persona that I love: freedom of choice and time management. For so long it is forced activities and early nights. In fact, that’s an overall complaint with the game: too many early nights. Far too often you are forced to end a day in which you have been given no choice. It has to happen for plot reasons occasionally but it’s a real pain due to the frequency of this. Luckily, the mandatory content in the first 8 hours is really compelling, if a bit slow. There’s an interesting framing device and the first dungeon has a really neat narrative. Unfortunately, early introductions to characters are not wholly positive but, later on, these loveable scamps will win you over.

The framing device, in general, is worth mentioning. It’s cool: you are being interrogated and explaining all that led to your capture. It enables the game to start with a flashy abilitease and gives some overall structure. It’s not used that well though. It’s frequently unclear as to whether your interrogator is hearing everything you are ‘playing’ as they respond in ways that imply they don’t see the whole picture but sometimes in ways that imply they do. Getting a new confidant (the new name for social links) flashes you forward to weird questions about this person in a way that doesn’t always make sense. You meet the person and it is established who they are – a hacker, per se – and then the interrogator asks how you did something – for example, did you have access to a hacker. You as the player raise an eyebrow and think… Wait, are you actually listening to me? We just established that. It’s hokey and even in the central narrative it’s genuinely unclear how much you are getting across to your conversational partner and this ambiguity impacts the success of the narrative. This links to a grander issue of some poor writing - some due to obvious bad translation and some due to straight up shitty writing. There’s a bit towards the end where two villains stand for ten minutes and explain each other, just doling out pointless exposition. Genuinely, one of them just breaks down the career history of this guy to the guy himself, in a way that is only at all relevant because you need to know this information as a player. This conversation would never actually happen and things like that happen too often.

On the positive side, gameplay is so much better than ever before – and I love Persona gameplay. There are some really clever wrinkles added to the battle system and I adore the dungeons. Many have been put off by the central puzzles that each have but, for me, these aspects were overwhelmingly positive. I liked how tailor made these experience were and that I still had classic randomly generated dungeons to go through if I wanted. Confidant bonuses are also really well thought out and bring some mechanics which are genuine game changers. Elements feed into each other better than ever before and it makes everything feel so worthwhile – even when some of the confidant storylines are formulaic to a fault. One niggle: traversal options and a cover system are cool but the controls are not up to it (and neither is the camera).

So, the holistic view of Persona: the first 8 hours are confining and somewhat infuriating; the first 50 hours are very good but left me in a state of like rather than love; the last 75 hours are wonderful! That’s not a bad ratio of quality and it makes the game really rewarding. So, time to justify my adoration of the back two thirds (roughly). Here be spoilers… massive spoilers:

Persona 5 goes places.

It goes to fascinating places that I didn’t think it would go to and it makes good on some things I never thought it would. The overall thematic statements really struck a chord with me. It’s a game about challenging the status-quo, standing up for what you believe in and about not letting the apathy of society get in the way of progress. It is a game about moral superiority and, for want of another phrase, being a warrior for social justice, and…. Actually, I really like that stuff. It’s punk rock; it’s youthful rebellion; it’s saying that things don’t have to be a certain way. It’s also quite damming to the older generation in a way that I think is justified. It chimes with zeitgeist movements, like the current Labour party or the partial rise of Bernie Sanders. It’s about (LITERALLY) breaking your chains and working for the greater good.

The game starts with imagery of you being chained and locked down, these chains permeate the overall presentation in a way that I thought was purely stylistic. It’s an incredibly stylish game full of visual motifs but this overwhelming sense of style means you read everything as aesthetic rather than symbolic. However, very late in the game – I’m talking final boss late – this imagery comes full circle. It comes after you have attacked something which is basically the opiate of the people; you have fought against bourgeoisie controlling figures and have pushed an ideology of waking up the passive populace in order to overthrow the current system. You’re fighting a god. It’s awesome. That god is a literal god of control that has been used, in other ways, as a controlling force throughout the game. You realise that the entire game has been set up as a ‘game’ in fiction (not a video game but a manufactured scenario in which you are being set up) and you’re into MGS2 style meta-narrative shit. And it’s wonderful. You spend the game breaking people form the control of their base desires whilst also taking down controlling figures in society and BAM, it turns out that a familiar character (who seemed strange at the start, in a way that seemed like a critique but was actually foreshadowing) is not who he says he is. You have been controlled by the God of Control and it’s symbolic of the place of the disaffected youth in society. Your pseudo-young offender background makes for even better commentary on how the youth are demonised by adults who claim they know better but actually enforce negative aspects of society. Then, back to the boss fight, you literally break out of these chain – the same chains that recur as a visual motif. It goes from having Marxist undertones to basically saying: ‘Persona users have nothing to lose but their chains. They have a world to win. Persona users of all countries unite.’ Characters are even referencing you TAKING THE WORLD. There’s a revolution in the streets; the camera zooms in on a youth giving a revolutionary fist pump. It’s fucking glorious. It actually goes there and it goes there well.

It’s these thematic elements, and the political thrust, that make Persona 5 soar for me. The gameplay is still fantastic but, to be honest, when Persona returns, they need to shake things up. There are already elements that seem limited by the overall structure and another game of that exact structure will just provide diminishing returns. This one last time though, it works and it works really well. I’ve given a lot of my life to Persona 5 and I plan on giving it even more. What a game!

#persona 5 #persona #jrpg #video games #ps4

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